Dharma, sutras, and commentarial interpretations of interest to American Buddhists of all traditions with news that not only informs but transforms. Emphasis on meditation, enlightenment, karma, social evolution, and nonharming.
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Hey, you can't say that! Well, during a roast you can. Sometimes satire and irony have a much larger point to make. It's what made Stephen Colbert a super star. It didn't hurt Jon Stewart either. Have you seen "Strangers With Candy"? Maybe you should.

Amy Sedaris is funnier and brighter than Colbert, who was a major part of the show. Where did Sarah Silverman come from? We remember when she was just a shining light on "Mr. Show with Bob and David," along with Jack Black, Brian Poseyn, the voice of Sponge Bob Square Pants, and other friends from the San Fernando Valley.

Sodom and Satin ("Southpark")

Bob is Bob Odenkirk ("Breaking Bad"), now appearing in "Better Call Saul." And David is traveling comedian David Cross of "Arrested Development" and other projects. What would we do without comedy? Here fainthearted Franco gets skewered, deflated, and roasted to a crisp by Aziz Ansari, Seth Rogen (Franco's co-star in Sony's qualified-flop "The Interview"), Bill Hader and Andy Sandberg (SNL), Jonah Hill ("The Sitter," a.k.a. Seth Rogen Jr.), Nick Kroll, and others.

"Evil," in the broadest sense of the word as unskillful or unwholesome (akusala), refers to all those karmicvolitions (the intentions behind deeds) and the consciousness and mental-concomitants (cittas and cetasikas) associated with harming ourselves, others, or both.

VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED!

Our karma or actions are accompanied either by greed, aversion, delusion; nongreed, nonaversion, nondelusion; or a mix of these.

The first three root motivations -- when they manifest covertly in mind or overtly in speech and body -- are causes of subsequent unpleasant, undesirable, unwished for karmic-results. And they contain the seeds of unhappy destinies and rebirths. "Evil" (papa) is better reserved for things more extreme than roasting someone, a gentle kind of torture.

The beliefs behind behavior are karma, too.

We would NOT even call killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, perjury, or intoxication "evil." Refraining from these is following the Five Precepts, something the Buddha always recommended as the best courses of action. The English word "evil" is best reserved for industrial-scale killing, war activities, mass distruction, karma with a fixed result (of which there are only five):

things Monsanto and Big Pharma plan in board rooms,

things the Pentagon, NSA, CIA, FBI consider business as usual,

things Mara does or impels/encourages others to do with their confused cooperation.

NOTE: Technically fear is "evil," when evil (akusala) is used in its broadest sense to refer to ANYTHING within the range of greed, hatred, and delusion (lobha, dosa, moha) because fear is a form of aversion, which is a kind of "hate." But to say say so in English is to commit violence against the language, given that very few people are concerned with technicalities, precise definitions, or the subtle distinctions of Buddhist psychology (Abhidharma). Writ large, few Americans think there is anything morally wrong or karmically harmful with desiring, disliking, or being confused. But readers must be ever mindful of the fact that Buddhism is rarely speaking English; rather, it is Sanskrit and Pali in translation using slightly imperfect or very rough English equivalents. The "Heart Sutra" is not as perplexing in the original.This leads to many needless paradoxes that do not arise in the original languages the Buddha taught in, which were Magadhi and other Prakrits. He almost certainly understood Sanskrit but would have had no occasion to speak it except to Brahmin trying to debate him.

OJ Simpson? Not evil. Dick Cheney? Evil. Police? Not evil. CIA? Evil. Franco? Not evil. Bush? Evil. Things can be very bad and a bad idea without being evil. If we call it all "evil," we only cheapen the word. Nazi leaders were evil; the Germans at the parades and rallies, probably not evil.

Karma. It's everywhere you're going to be.

Who can really say what another's motivations are? We can barely determine our own and we constantly misunderstand what Buddhism means by "intention." It's not what one "intended" to happen. "I didn't mean for it to go this far..." It's what motivated (the impulse or intentionality behind it) one to act -- the "greed" (lust, craving, clinging, attachment, harmful desires), "hatred" (aversion, fear, wrath), or delusion (wrong view, confusion, ignorance).

Karma is deep, difficult to fathom completely, and it works out (vipaka and phala) in mysterious ways.

Funny

WISDOM QUARTERLY

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